"I thought you were dead."

Celebrating fifteen years of sobriety

I woke up to the sound of sirens, screeching tires, loud voices.

“Are you okay?”

I opened my eyes. I was outside, lying in the grass, blinking at the sunlight slanting through the trees, when it dawned on me the question had been directed at me.

I sat up. There was a police cruiser in the middle of the street, lights flashing, the cop half in and half out of the car.

“Are you okay?” he repeated.

I was fully clothed. I wasn’t bleeding. My pants were damp, either from the dew on the grass or from having pissed myself. That could be determined later.

“Yeah?” I said.

“I thought you were dead,” the cop said.

He climbed back into his cruiser and drove off, leaving me by the side of the road, not dead, but not quite alive.

I wasn’t sure where I was. I was wearing a t-shirt, jeans, Doc Martens, and a flannel shirt. I hadn’t pissed myself, which was good news, but my zipper was down.

I got to my feet and took in my surroundings. I was in a little cluster of trees off to the side of a house with a big front porch that looked familiar. It was the house of a friend of a friend. I’d been to a party here the night before. An after-hours keg party—even though it was a school night. I must have wandered off to take a leak and passed out in the bushes.

I looked at my G Shock.

It was 7:50 in the morning. If I hurried, I could still make it to my eight o’clock class.

I went up the porch stairs. The front door was unlocked and I went inside. There were people passed out on the couch, curled up on the floor. On the coffee table a pile of textbooks sat atop a spiral-bound notebook.

I flipped to the back of the notebook and ripped out a page and then another. I folded up the sheets and put them in my pocket. I snagged a pencil from the coffee table and went out the door.

On the porch, I took off my t-shirt, turned it inside out, and put it back on. Then I wrapped the flannel shit around my waist so no one could see my dew-dampened jeans. My hair? I didn’t care what my hair looked like.

I lunged down the steps and went to class.

It’s just a minor mohawk

This scene unfolded in 1988. I was twenty years old but I already knew I had a problem with alcohol.

I had just completed two years of active duty in the U.S. Navy and those last six months were a battle. I got in so much trouble that the Navy wanted to take away my college benefits, force me into an alcohol rehabilitation program, and extend my enlistment.

For most people, that would be a wake-up call, a sign that I needed to change my behavior, but I kept partying and getting into trouble. I got thrown out of the enlisted men’s club. I resisted arrest when base security came to take me away. I got picked up by shore patrol after pissing on the walls at Jack Murphy Stadium. The list goes on and on.

I somehow made it out of the Navy, which is a story in and of itself, and went to college at Radford University in southwest Virginia, the only school that would take me.

Again, instead of changing my ways, I continued to get into trouble, all of it alcohol related.

Improbably, if everything goes as planned, on Friday, February 2, 2024, I’ll celebrate 15 years of sobriety.

I’m 55 years old, which means I didn’t get clean and sober until I turned 40.

I shared this particular anecdote from my drinking life because it illustrates the kind of stupid shit I used to do, but also why it took another 20 years for me to call it quits.

When I got out of the Navy, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew that I wanted nothing to do with the kind of life the Navy offered.

Even though I was hungover from being blackout drunk and I didn’t have any books with me, I went to class.

I probably smelled bad and looked horrible but these things didn’t deter me. I was used to getting by on little sleep. Eight o’clock was practically sleeping in. I don’t remember what class it was or what I retained that day but I got straight As that semester.

I was a stubborn belligerent drunk, which was a departure from my timid personality. That shyness masked a determination I possessed—drunk or sober. Sitting in a classroom seemed a lot easier than working in the hot sun scraping rust off a stanchion or painting the waterline in a leaky, foul-smelling punt, and I did that shit all over the Western Pacific: San Diego, Subic Bay, Yokosuka with hangovers that were much, much worse.

Day in the life of a deck ape

I was a high-functioning alcoholic. I don’t know how I was able to drink like I did for so long. I had periods when I wasn’t sober, but I cut back on my drinking. There were stretches when I didn’t drink at all. They never lasted for long, but thanks to the AA meetings the Navy made me attend, I knew I had a problem. I knew that when it was time to get serious about my life, I was going to have to stop.

But I kept drinking.

As my disease got its hooks in me, I kept kicking that can down the road. Promising jobs, relationships, and writing opportunities—none of that mattered. I’ll stop someday, I told myself.

My drinking wasn’t serious enough to stop all the “fun” I was having in my 20s and 30s. When the promise ran out and those jobs, relationships, and writing opportunities started to deteriorate, I still wasn’t convinced I needed to stop—even though I knew I had a problem.

So why did I wait so long?

The mind of an alcoholic isn’t rational. I’m sharing this now because there are probably people reading this who know they have a problem but aren’t ready to do something about it. Or maybe you have a partner, parent, or loved one who is in that terrible place where the end is coming and they can’t see it.

When I look at the 20 years between this incident in Virginia and when I had my last drink, it’s tempting to say, I wish I’d stopped sooner because when I consider the last fifteen years and all the amazing things that have happened to me and to my writing career, it’s no coincidence that the majority of these things happened after I quit drinking.

I don’t regret those days or let the mistakes of those days have power over me. I can only control one day—today—and by choosing not to drink I can have a good day and wake up tomorrow with a clear head.

That’s it. I can’t change the past. (Although, as a writer, I can make it serve my purposes. Like now.)

If you are new to sobriety or seriously considering it, I hope that you don’t beat yourself up over the past. Sobriety is not a get-out-of-jail free card. We all have things we have to atone for and for many of us it’s the guiding force in our lives.

But if you think that you’re too far gone, you waited too long, or your life is fucked up beyond all repair, I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. It is never too late to have the life you want.

Did you hear that?

It’s never too late for a life free of the burden of addiction.

It’s never too late to leave your resentments behind.

It’s never too late to let gratitude into your heart.

For those of you who have cheered me on during this journey, thank you. Your love and support means more than you will ever know.

If you’re new-ish here and you liked this newsletter you might also like my latest novel Make It Stop, or the paperback edition of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, or my book with Bad Religion, or my book with Keith Morris. Message from the Underworld comes out every Wednesday and is always available for free, but paid subscribers also get Orca Alert! every Sunday. It’s a weekly round-up of links about art, culture, and science you may have missed while trying to avoid the shitty news of the day.